03/26/99
By Tracey Eaton and Alfredo Corchado / The Dallas Morning News
White House vows to keep up the pressure
HAVANA - Yedelin Fernandez has a rather unorthodox way of gauging U.S.-Cuba relations. She consults her own personal "frown-meter" - her 41-year-old uncle Vladimir's drooping face.
The longer the frown and deeper the wrinkles, the worse U.S.-Cuba relations are. And these days, she's convinced, Vladimir is looking like a ragged old hound dog.
"Things haven't been this bad between the United States and Cuba since the shoot-down," the 19-year-old Havana student said, referring to the 1996 incident when Cuban fighter jets downed two civilian planes piloted by Cuban-Americans opposed to President Fidel Castro.
Underscoring the current state of affairs, Clinton administration officials said Wednesday that unless the Castro regime moves closer toward Western-style democracy, the United States will continue with its hardline approach, including economic sanctions and support of nongovernmental organizations in Cuba.
"If we want to see fundamental change in Cuba, pressure is necessary," said Michael Ranneberger, head of Cuban affairs at the U.S. State Department.
A lot of ordinary Cubans disagree with that.
"Get rid of the blockade, bring on the Americans, have them filling our hotels and walking our streets, that's how to put pressure on Fidel," said a 26-year-old construction worker who gave his name only as Alexis.
As Alexis spoke, a police official whistled to him and asked for his identification card.
"I've got to go," he said. "I shouldn't be talking to you."
For the last five months, many Havana residents say, the authorities have been trying to limit Cubans' contact with foreigners.
As part of what appears to be a new strategy, Cuban officials in February also passed laws boosting penalties for those convicted of trying to weaken or overthrow the government.
A Salvadoran man who admitted to placing bombs in Havana hotels to disrupt the island's burgeoning tourist industry was sentenced to death earlier this week. Cuban officials say he was financed by anti-Castro exiles living in South Florida.
Cuban authorities say their country of 11 million has been under siege from the United States, the world's most powerful nation, for four decades. If not for that, they say, they wouldn't have to take such harsh measures.
"No nation should be condemned for defending its independence," Cuban Vice President Carlos Lage said in Geneva earlier this week.
Mr. Ranneberger and other U.S. officials have criticized what they see as an increasingly repressive environment in Cuba.
Mr. Lage, who was in Geneva to defend Cuba's human rights record, called the U.S. position hypocritical.
Americans, he said, consume more illicit drugs than anyone else, produce more weapons of mass destruction, tolerate a health care system that fails to insure 43 million people, and have failed to eliminate crime and racism.
So, he asked, who gave the United States "the right to elect itself supreme judge of human rights?"
Mr. Lage also said that the United States also has laws to punish those who subvert the government. And he said Cuban authorities have nothing against people who merely want to express themselves.
"No one in Cuba is punished for thinking and expressing opinions," he said.
But authorities will take action against those who try to "destabilize the country, subvert internal order and destroy the revolution."
Mr. Ranneberger told the House International Relations subcommittee this week that he fears Cuba has stalled a once-promising process of political and economic reform.
"Our hope is that pressure coupled with the incentive of relieving it and replacing it with a more cooperative relationship will lead to democratic change," he said.
©1999 The Dallas Morning News